Section Two: Melancholic
by Lindz
Summary: [#2] Tifa's POV. About her life, about Nibelheim, about Cloud. About how he left her a year ago. If you really want to you can read Lamtening (Section One) as well it's from Cloud's POV


** Section Two: Melancholic**

_ Tifa's POV. About her life, about Nibelheim, about Cloud. About how he left her a year ago._

_ Song: Sugababes - Stronger_

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_**I'll make it through the rainy days  
I'll be the one who stands here longer than the rest**_

_"Momma!"_

_"Don't worry Angel. You'll see me again."_

_"Momma! Don't go!"_

_"I'll always be watching you from the stars at night."_

_"Momma!"_

_"You'll be ok Teef. You're a strong girl."_

_"Momma!"_

**_When my landscape changes, rearranges  
I'll be stronger than I've ever been_**

_"Papa..." _

_"Sephiroth!?" _

_"Sephiroth did this to you, didn't he!?" _

_"Sephiroth... SOLDIER... Mako Reactors... Shinra... Everything!" _

_"I hate them all!" _

_**No more stillness, more sunlight,  
Everything's gonna be alright**_

_ "Teef! You wanna join AVALANCHE?"_

_ "Who?"_

_ "AVALANCHE. They're a terrorist group trying to stop Shinra. There's posters about them everywhere. Seems like they want Shinra to know about them."_

_ "Maybe..."_

_"C'mon Teef! We'll get revenge, just like you want. Once Shinra's gone everything will be better."_

_ "Once Shinra's gone................ Someone has to fight them right?"_

_ "Yeah."_

_ "OK I'll do it!"_

_"See Teef. Everything's gonna be alright. You'll see."_

*********************************

It has been a year since HE left me.

One whole year, Fifty two weeks, three hundred and sixty five days.

I loved him. I loved him so much it scared me. I never knew you could adore someone you didn't even know, that didn't even know his true self. 

I had no idea how to handle it. He only had eyes for HER. I watched as everyday our journey went on, his eyes would be trained on the wonderful flower girl. The woman who could do nothing wrong. I loathed her, and she had do nothing to me. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Maybe if he had never met her, me and Cloud would be together. Even if never meeting her would mean the end of the world, Cloud and I would have at least been together for a little while. 

Heh, How selfish am I? You're supposed to be happy for you're best friend. You're supposed to want them to be happy, not so utterly miserable they don't want to live.

My hometown, Nibelheim. I've never been back since we passed through over a year ago. The place holds too many bad memories for me. My mother died there, so did my father. The whole town burnt down, but now it stands again, like before. The friend I never realised I had, left town to be a SOLDIER. 

I missed him once he left. I was so surprised when he asked me to meet him onto top of the well. Some of the things that slipped out my mouth that night, I never knew where they came from. Cloud, the little boy next door. That's all he was to me until that night. Once he had left, I couldn't get him out of my head. His blonde hair, his deep blue eyes. Every time I tried to sleep they were staring at me. I never thought thirteen year olds could fall in love. 

Two years later, I found out Sephiroth was coming to Nibelheim to get rid of the monsters that were trailing into town. I was ecstatic when I found out. Maybe Cloud would be with them? I had been looking in the newspaper every day for the last two years. I never found his name once. I thought that he hadn't made it yet. I didn't really care anymore, I just wanted to see him again.

The SOLDIER's came. At the time I didn't think Cloud was there. I was disappointed. I really wanted to see him again, even if it was only for a day. I never realised, the little guard that wouldn't let me in the reactor was none other than Cloud himself. I can remember asking him if he knew Cloud. I feel so stupid now.

The day went by uneventful, but come night time, everything changed.

The town set ablaze.

Sephiroth killed the only thing I had left, my Papa.

He gave me a nice souvenir, a scar that starts at my collar bone and ends just above my navel. 

I can't remember much about that night. I was running on adrenaline. The trip I made from the town to the reactor, I have no recognition of. One minute I was in the burning hot town, next I was stood outside the cold, gloomy reactor. Before I knew it, there was searing hot pain running through my chest. I black out.

The next thing I remember, I was waking up in a clinic somewhere. The place I now know as Midgar.

I was alone.

Zangan had brought me to Midgar, away from the clutches of Shinra, and left me. He thought the clinic would take care of me. They did, for a little while. As soon as I was well enough to walk away, they basically told me to get out.

I was a fifteen year old wandering around the slums of Midgar.

I took one step out the clinic and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was an orphan. I had no family left, and I was stuck in a place I didn't know. I started crying. I just wanted to curl up in a corner and die. I had nothing left to live for. I actually considered just crawling into that corner, before I bumped in a girl who was walking by. She stopped and looked at the mess I was in, and smiled.

Jessie was my first real friend in Midgar.

_**I know that there's gonna be a change  
Better find your way out of your fear  
If you wanna come with me  
Then that's the way it's gotta be**_

_**I'm all alone and finally  
I'm getting stronger  
You'll come to see  
Just what I can be  
I'm getting stronger**_

In less than a week, my whole life had changed. I no longer lived in the quiet town of Nibelheim. I didn't even live on the same continent. My family was gone. I never knew so much could happen in a week. If you think about it, Midgar isn't the worse place in the world. Once I had gotten over everything that had happened, I actually enjoyed living there. I had better friends than I ever did in Nibelheim.

There was Jessie. She was thirteen when I met her, two years younger than me. She had been in Midgar for all of her life. She was the only girl I knew in the city. Then there was Biggs and Wedge, both older than me, though I never asked the how old they actually were. 

They're dead now. 

Excuse me, I'm jumping ahead of myself, like I normally do. Back to where I was before.

Living in the slums made a girl grow up extremely quickly. I had to get a job. I ended up working in a bar. Yes, it was Seventh Heaven. I ended up being the owner's bouncer, which was pretty funny. Most of the men there didn't think I could lift a crate, never mind kick the shit out of someone.

One night, a couple of the guys started a fight, I easily knocked them out. None of the men said anything after that. I think they were a bit p-ed that I could kick their asses, and I was just a little girl. Heh, I was glad they were a tad scared of me. It made my nights easier. 

This carried on for about a year. Then came a night I would probably never forget. The boss of the Seventh Heaven, his name was Grey. No one asked why, it certainly wasn't his real name. He was out that night, I was looking after the bar myself. 

Grey never came back. 

Gossip went around that someone had shot him then hid the body. Whatever happened, he never came back. The bar became mine. I think it was stupid, a sixteen year old running her own bar. I should have been still at school for god sake!

There was a back room in the bar. It became permanent residence to Jessie, Biggs, Wedge and I. We lived in a vacant flat before that. We shouldn't have been in it anyway, none of us were paying the rent. They all helped out in the bar. It was fun for a while. Then it became a chore, it became boring. I always knew I was a person that couldn't stick something out for long. 

Winters weren't a problem, It was never cold under the plate, probably the only good thing about it. It was warm all the time, even in the middle of winter. All the smog from the reactors got trapped under the steal.

Not long after I became the owner of Seventh Heaven, Barret appeared.

He looked a little worse for wear. Well, who wouldn't after their town got burnt to the ground? I would know, wouldn't I?

Feeling sorry for him, I let him help out in the bar. He fit in rather quickly I think. If it was possible for someone to hate Shinra more than me, Barret would win. 

When the group AVALANCHE popped up out of no where, who would resist the chance to try and take Shinra down. 

Heh, that's right, we never came up with the idea for AVALANCHE. There was a gang in sector 6, hideout was somewhere under Wall Market. They despised Shinra. They wanted Shinra to know about them. They started blowing up old derelict building, trying to prove their point. After loads of persuading from Jessie and Barret, the rest of us decided to help them out.

The leader, a man named Harvey. He was in his fifties, I think. His sister used to work for Shinra, until she disappeared twenty six years before. He'd been trying to get revenge against Shinra for years, especially against the Science Department, where she used to work. Harvey was sure it was Hojo's work. 

By now you've probably guessed his sister's name was Lucrecia. 

Funny how small this world actually is, isn't it?

The group was really small. There was only Harvey and another two men. When we joined up, that made eight of us. I always wondered how eight people would destroy a monopoly company. Even though we managed it four years later, and without even trying to.

I'm jumping ahead of myself again. You have to stop me next time.

Anyway couple of weeks later, we went on a routine operation to blow up one of the neglected buildings in sector three. It went wrong. The building blew up with Harvey and his two friends in it. The original members of AVALANCHE were gone. We made Barret be the leader. We told him it's what Harvey would have wanted. 

AVALANCHE lived on. Shinra didn't realise. They thought the whole group consisted of three people. With them dead, they though they had eradicated another terrorist group.

The next four years went by slow enough. I kept running the bar. AVALANCHE kept on going. For the first time ever, I felt like I was doing something to help the world. I felt good about myself. Of course I still missed my family, but the pain got less, I learned to live with it.

Then HE showed up.

Sat outside the train station. 

It didn't take me long to work out who it was. I mean, I had been fantasising about him for the last seven years.

Cloud Strife had just walked back into my live, I wasn't about to let him go again. He hung around, ended up helping us. Barret came up with the idea of blowing up Reactor One. We thought about it, planned it out. I got left behind.

And that's where my story ends.

We saved the world from Meteor. Everyone got a second chance at life. Cloud found HER. He lost her. Sephiroth killed her.

He was obsessed over a dead girl. I didn't want him to be. I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to forget about her and live a life with me. It never happened.

He left a few weeks after Meteor. 

He left me alone.

I was alone, again.

I turned the whole of AVALANCHE against him without even realising. They all hate him now. He hasn't showed his face for a year.

I want to see him again. Even if it's just to say sorry.

Cloud, I should have told you the truth from the beginning. I didn't mean to keep it from you. Maybe I thought it wasn't a good time to tell you. 

A few weeks after he left, AVALANCHE went their separate ways. I felt like they didn't care anymore. They had left me here in Kalm, alone.

_**I didn't know what I had to do  
I just knew I was alone  
People around me  
But they didn't care  
So I searched into my soul  
I'm not the type of girl that will let them see her cry  
It's not my style  
I get by  
See i'm gonna do this for me**_

It took me months, but I finally made the pain less again. I had done it once before. I learned to live with a little bit more pain. I never cried in front of anyone since Jessie found me 5 years ago. I didn't want to look weak in front of anyone.

I can't spend the rest of my life mourning the people I've lost.

I have to get on with life. I still have a long time in front of me.

I'm stronger now than I've ever been.

For what it's worth Cloud, I'm sorry.

_**I'm all alone and finally  
I'm getting stronger  
You'll come to see  
Just what I can be  
I'm getting stronger**_

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End file.
